Category: Mounts

I had a really productive week with mounts. I had decided after finally attaining Ji-Kun, that I would work on the Hatchling mounts next [the questline you get from the little orphaned pets in the Warden quest Swarm areas. After a few days of completing the quests on Askevar, I discovered that I could do more quests if I accepted them on level 110 alts! So I pushed that for a few days and lo and behold, I now have four additional mounts

So I got two mounts today… And these days getting one mount is a big deal.

Well, I was up very late grinding out the last few coins for the fishing mount from Nat Pagle. I finally got it. But I was mumbling how evil the water was when it took nearly 15 minutes to get the very last coin I needed. You can read my insanity on twitter covering it lol.

Crimson Water Strider

I started 23 coins short so that’s not too bad. I know it’s a recolor but it gets me one closer to my goal of 300… Hubby said it looks like an evil version of the water strider and I suppose it does…

After I woke up, I decided to do a few Vortex Pinnacle runs since it’s one of the mounts I’m still missing. I read a little bit on Wowhead and they advised using a hunter/rogue/feral druid just for ease of stealthing through mobs/speed. Monk probably would have worked too as you can just run by most of the mobs, but I went with the hunter and camo’d to the first boss, killed it and just ran to the second. Four or five attempts later, the boss had a purple on it.

Yes, it says 11 attempts there [that’s the Rarity addon – it shows attempts/faux achievements. But that’s a toon I don’t really play much and they had 6-7 attempts when I started. Askevar’s been through that place quite a bit more. So while it seems lucky, I probably have well over 100 attempts on that boss accountwide… and the Rarity addon is a relatively new thing… no idea if it’s counting runs from before either.

But that leaves me 3 mounts shy of the 300 goal. I still need the 5k saberstalker mount… which is a grind I don’t look forward to, the Champion’s Treadblade, and the Mystic Runesaber among others. And there’s my weekly Elegon/Horridon runs that haven’t yielded anything yet.

Well this weekend I decided it was high time I sat down and finally got at least one of the warbringer mounts. My experience grouping for those has not been very good. This weekend however was pretty much just me with hubby joining me on a few circuits.

I managed to net two of the three mounts in the process – And while I occasionally saw people farming them or camping the Dread Wastes one, they’re up a lot on my circuits – even on the weekend – so it’s not a horrible time to farm them.

And today, I was running my last toon through the daily “Zul’Gurub Raptor Grind” and fussing to hubby about having run it enough times that I should have gotten the drop already, when lo and behold it dropped! I’ve run that for the past month on 4-5 toons a day. Yes, persistence is my key… and it pays off, usually sooner than it did here 😛

One thing I’ve chosen to do with regard to leveling my toons is to pick a ground only mount for them to use during their leveling process in Pandaland. The combo ground/flying mounts I will have plenty of time to play around with at 90 but the ground only mounts often get lost in the shuffle once you hit max level.

My main, Askevar, rode her Rivendare’s charger all around Pandaland while leveling. And that will now be her mount in ground mount only areas… should there be any 😛 And my feral druid who is now level 87 is riding the Raven Lord. It’s been such a long time since I’ve properly enjoyed some of these mounts.

So the ground mount riding sucks for alts, but might as well make the best of it since it’s going to be that way.

Askevar is 90… hit it Friday in fact [with Venoym]. This was the fastest and hardest we’ve ever pushed to level. I know a lot of people like to savor initially, but we both prefer to just get our main to 90 and worry about savoring later with alts. That’s why they exist after all? Anyway, Askevar’s main set is going along well. I do a couple scenarios a day as well as a heroic or two in the evening. All my pieces, save a 442 blue ring, are 450 or better, with several 463 items. I’m doing my daily rep grinds and I’ve maxed all my professions both primary [Inscription/Jewelcrafting] and Secondary [Archaeology, First Aid, Cooking, Fishing] and I got access to the end food for the Way of the Oven [aka the tank tree]. I also have all my on server alts parked at Halfhill to farm various veggies to max the other ways or to create the max Oven food. By the way, if you do this, the Outpost Zhu flightpoint in Krasanger is the one that connects the Jade Forest initial town to Halfhill.

For that matter, I’ve now maxed out every profession on my account except Blacksmithing and Skinning. Suffice to say, our guild has the heirloom legs already, and not just through my efforts either. Sadly they are only good through 85, which I think is a little silly, but I was able to buy a pair for my level 20 monk. Oh, we also have the guild shirts because a group running scenarios last night saw we were only two away and decided to finish. They’re kinda cute but you can’t see it with my armor on [as it should be for a tank].

My offset gear is crap [its unholy now, gave up frost] and a quarter to half the pieces are still level 85 stuff that I need to replace, but, on the flipside, I’m quite a hardy tank right now.

Honestly, I don’t see any of my alts getting to 90 very quickly. I’ve got 2 at 86 – my bank alt/gatherer and my horde pally [the horde pally would net me 2 account achievements]. With our guild not even discussing raiding for another two weeks, I might get one leveled but who knows? My main priority, as always, is going to be getting Askevar’s tank set raid ready – everything else is bonus.

Sundays have become achievement night and due to lack of interest from our guild [a lot of people are still busy leveling and that’s alright], we’ve been pulling from cross realm friends. We’ve gotten a lot done though and we’ve had a blast doing it. We even managed to 9 man Heroic Chimaeron just before MoP hit – with 3 healers, 2 tanks and the rest dps – and that’s what we managed to get… we had intended to 2 heal, but with everyone wanting to try out their mainspec, extra heals never hurt :D.

I will admit, at times the dailies feel almost endless, but once I get the reputations to max, I’ll be gold. I’m already revered with Order of the Cloud Serpent and well into honored with most of the rest so it’ll get there 🙂 And I’m not finding these dailies near as painful as some have been in the past either.

Goldwise – I’ve already spent a ton between buying the Grand Expedition Yak and speed leveling some professions. Despite that, I’ve actually managed to make money on Askevar and I’ll make back the rest and then some when I level the alts, so it’ll all work out. Hey, don’t look at me that way… I saved and ground for that Yak for several months before MoP dropped and I’m darn proud of it! There is nothing like achieving a goal you set out to complete.

Speaking of achievements, for the first time since I was maining a warlock, I have finally passed my husband in total achievement points. Now, so it’s said, that won’t last as he’ll do all those achievements and catch right back up… but for once it’s nice to be ahead!

Account Wide Achievements – A minus
I like these and approve happily of them! I’ve done achievements on quite a few toons and I still can… but now I can ignore the ones I don’t care to do! The only drawback to this is that I wish reputation had been account-wide as well… or if not fully mimicking the reputation of your main toon, that you at least got SOME benefit from exalting with a faction once? There are some grinds I will never do again.

Account Wide Pets and Mounts – A minus
I’m okay with this change too. In fact, there’s been only one concern for me in regards to account wide pets. Why is the ceiling set at 500? I collected pets as I found them account wide. So much so that I ended up with a total of over 1260 pets in the book… meaning I’m going to have quite a few to go through when MoP finally hits. I also have 2 new pets sitting in my bags that I can’t learn right now because of the limit.

Cross Realm Zones – D minus overall now [F for implementation]
This feature was implemented in a way not advertised, is causing excessive lag and is just frustratingly random. Doing my Icecrown dailies, I have to log several times because if it reads that I’m supposed to cross realms and it doesn’t transfer my toon, rather than ending up on my own realm, I end up in a “dead” space with no N.PCs, no players, no mobs. It’s not a matter of anything other than the implementation and it’s frustrating as heck. Sometimes I can’t even log out and have to force quit and restart. This feature is also vulnerable to griefing and that just isn’t cool. Plus, doing the fishing tournaments, Wintergrasp and Tol Barad is basically out right now. I think a better alternative would have been to permit free transfers for a short time to certain realms or from certain realms. Star Wars had some success with allowing low pop servers to migrate to high population servers. The super low population left behind could become the “new” servers for new players. It has potential if they can work out the bugs, but I’m not as optimistic that they will quickly.

Guild Reputation – AI like the higher rate of guild reputation. I think it needed to be easier to obtain… maybe not as easy as it is but it’s been nice to finish exalting the alts that have swapped guilds so they can have exalted reputation again with their guilds.

Druid Travel Form – A Plus
Okay I ADORE this. It’s wonderfully appropriate and much better than the cheetah in my opinion. And my druid healer can be a tree again yay!!!